Description

According to Matt the song is about "trying to get into that mindset of being completely determined to win, doing it against all the odds, the conviction and the truth of just wanting to win. I wanted to tune into the competitiveness of it all."[1]
It's about "total conviction and pure determination to win."[2]

Information

By error of Bellamy, Howard, Wolstenholme or Kirk, the name of the song was leaked by a photo on Twitter, until it was deleted.

On the 27th of June 2012, Survival was announced as the official song for the London 2012 Olympic Games.

The song was premiered on 27th June 2012 by Zane Lowe on his BBC Radio One show at 7:30pm along with a short prelude which was followed by an interview with the band.

During The 2nd Law Tour, Survival has been a standard feature of the encore.

Matt also sings during the four solos of the end of the song, with the same notes as the guitar.

The song also shares Matt's highest recorded vocal note of A♭5 along with Showbiz and Micro Cuts. Survival has been performed live during the 2nd law tour with the A♭5 although Matt tends to perform with an E♭5 instead.

Recording

The song was initially conceived in August 2011 when Matt was approached by a "top pianist," Sir Elton John, to create a collaborative song for the 2012 London Olympics.[3] This initial conception was unfruitful and the song was left unfinished and without lyrics after Elton John got pulled out by the organisers. In 2012, when the band began to work on the sixth Muse album, Matt finished writing Survival and it was recorded.

Reception

The song received mixed reviews by professional critics, bloggers and fans. Metro, Britain's largest free newspaper, published an article entitled "Muse's 2012 anthem fails to lift their fans into orbit."[4] Editor of NME Hamish MacBain asked "Have Muse jumped the shark?", saying the song left "the unmistakeable [sic] sense of a band with nowhere left to go" and that the lyrics were "REALLY crap,"[5] while Jamie Gambino of WithGuitars.com described it as "excruciating and quite possibly aneurism inducing". [6] Ian Port, blogging on SF Weekly, implied Survival was not a song, and was instead "just a very loud aggregation of dramatic noises.[7] Forbes focused on criticising the song's lyrics for not well representing the spirit of the Olympics as it purported to, reflecting that "the truisms about competition Bellamy lazily rolls out on “Survival” feel entirely antithetical to the event the song is supposed to represent", while musically it was a "tasteless, lackluster number".[8]

"If [the fans] hate it, cool," said Dom. "At least it's provoking something. It's a pretty weird song for the Olympics to choose, but it's cool that they think the song can represent the enormity of the Olympics. It takes you back to Gladiator-style Olympics. Maybe they should bring some of those back, like fending off a tiger with a spiked metal ball."[9]

The song did receive some praise too. Diffuser.fm rated the song 9/10, saying the song left them "definitely looking forward to ‘The 2nd Law‘ album."[10]
A poll by The Telegraph revealed that 81.5% of voters thought the song was "pop gold," while 18.5% described it as a "false start."[11] Digital Spy thought that it was the "right decision" to use the song for the Olympics, adding that it has "all the hallmarks of a classic British anthem".[12]
The Associated Press called the song "a thundering rock anthem." NME columnist Mark Beaumont was perturbed that the band's latest track was "assimilated into something as annoying" as the Olympics. He continued that "'Survival' might be amongst the most ear-scorchingly, arse-burstingly, aneurysm-inducingly brilliant songs in Muse’s canon, but it’ll forever be deemed corny by its association with one long-past sporting event." Adam Boult of The Guardian referred to the track as "a hilarious five-minute onslaught of camp, falling somewhere between Queen, Gloria Gaynor and a Monty Python sketch. Swelling strings, battle drums, ludicrous falsetto shrieking and chugga-chugga guitar channelling the Little Engine That Could. It's as insanely overblown as the Olympics themselves."

Covers

Survival was covered by the staff of Triple J radio. A Comedy Central advertisement parodied the song in a musical clip called "Completely Apathetic".[13]

Live

Survival is a massive stadium-rocker that made appearances at nearly every gig on The 2nd Law Tour. Despite only one promotional appearance, at the 2012 Olympics, Survival still managed to have over 115 performances during the tour. After 2014, however, it has yet to make a single appearance in a live concert. Alongside other singles Follow Me, Supremacy and Panic Station, it has rarely made an appearance since 2013. The band revealed that many songs from The 2nd Law wouldn't be performed again because of being "complicated to perform live" (this most likely refers to Survival and Follow Me). Prelude, the intro to Survival, has been performed many times on the Drones Tour, however Survival has yet to make a reappearance.

Lyrics

("Ah, ah ah ah", repeated)

Race
Life's a race
That I'm gonna win
Yes I'm gonna win
And I'll light the fuse
And I'll never lose
And I choose to survive
("Told you, so I", repeated)
Whatever it takes
You won't pull ahead
I'll keep up the pace
And I'll reveal my strength
To the whole human race
Yes, I am prepared
("You were warned and didn't listen", repeated)
To stay alive
I won't forgive
Vengeance is mine
And I won't give in
Because I choose to thrive
Yes, I'm gonna win